Table of Contents

Please make sure to download VCL from an mirror server. The following link will automatically select one for you that should be close to you. After downloading it make sure you verify it with MD5 or SHA1 sums AND the GPG signature (sums and signature files should be downloaded directly from Apache, not from mirrors).

Download ASF VCL 2.1
GPG Signature
MD5 Sum
SHA1 Sum
VCL KEYS file

Run the following command to verify the MD5 sum. You should get the same number that is in apache-VCL-2.1-incubating.tar.bz2.md5:
md5sum apache-VCL-2.1-incubating.tar.bz2

Similarly, Run the following command to verify the SHA1 sum. You should get the same number that is in apache-VCL-2.1-incubating.tar.bz2.sha1:
sha1sum apache-VCL-2.1-incubating.tar.bz2

To verify the GPG signature (you'll need to have GnuPG installed):

  1. download and import the VCL KEYS file:
    gpg --import KEYS
  2. download the GPG Signature to the same location as the release file
  3. from the directory containing both the release file and the GPG signature, run
    gpg --verify apache-VCL-2.1-incubating.tar.bz2.asc

Release Notes

I. Intro and Description

VCL, Virtual Computing Lab. The VCL can be many things, first and foremost it is an open-source system used to dynamically provision and broker remote access to a dedicated compute environment for an end-user. The provisioned computers are typically housed in a data center and may be physical blade servers, traditional rack mounted servers, or virtual machines. VCL can also broker access to standalone machines such as a lab computers on a university campus.

One of the primary goals of VCL is to deliver a dedicated compute environment to a user for a limited time through a web interface. This compute environment can range from something as simple as a virtual machine running productivity software to a machine room blade running high end software (i.e. a CAD, GIS, statistical package or an Enterprise level application) to a cluster of interconnected physical (bare metal) compute nodes.

Also using the scheduling API it can be used to automate the provisioning of servers in a server farm or HPC cluster.

The release supports provisioning nodes using xCAT 1.3, xCAT 2.1, vmware server 1.x, ESX standard Server using the toolkit the vmware-cmd on the esx host, ESXi using the vmware toolkit.

II. VCL Roadmap

VCL 2.1 (this release)

  • completed modularization of vcld
  • xCAT 2.1 support
  • Shibboleth authentication
  • VMWare management via VMWare toolkit
  • ESXi with thin provisioning on a NetApp
  • Only supports xCAT 1.3 and xCAT 2.1 versions

VCL 2.2

  • support for xCAT 2.3 or later versions
  • improve cluster reservations VMWare Free Server 2.x (changed after 2.1 release)
  • improve block reservations(rename to block allocations)

VCL 2.3

  • Service deployments
  • power management
  • VMWare Free Server 2.x improve cluster reservations (changed after 2.1 release)

VCL 2.4

  • improve hypervisor support
  • dynamic provisioning of host servers
  • possibly XEN or KVM

VCL 2.5

  • develop tools for managing both system and user storage

With each release, we'll be working toward making VCL easier to install. As part of our move to development at the Apache Software Foundation, it is an obvious goal to create a community of users and more developers around VCL. Bringing in more developers should become easier as VCL becomes easier to install.

III. Getting Involved in the ASF VCL Community

There are five ways to become involved in the ASF VCL community.

  • Submit bug reports and feature requests to our JIRA bug tracking system. See section IV below for more information on doing this.
  • Create documentation on our Confluence site. Create an account at http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/VCL/Index and just start adding content. (Note to current community: We should create a page explaining the layout so new people will know where to add content better.)
  • Submit patches through the vcl-dev mailing list and via the JIRA bug tracking system. Once you have become familiar with VCL, you can begin assisting with the development of it by picking a JIRA issue to fix or by adding a feature needed at your site. Then, contribute a patch of your changes through the JIRA tracking system and send a message to the vcl-dev list explaining what you have done.
  • Become an official committer to the project. Once you have shown that you have a good grasp of the project by submitting patches, you can further join the development work by submitting a contributor license agreement (CLA) to ASF and having a committer account created to directly contribute code to the project.

IV. How to Submit Bugs and Feature Requests

If you find a bug, please submit a bug report to our JIRA bug tracking system at http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/VCL (you will need to set up an account there if you haven't already done so - it's free to anyone). Also, we would appreciate it if you mentioned that you filed a bug on the vcl-dev list to make sure we don't miss it.

If you would like to requrest a new feature, you can also submit that in the same way through JIRA (just select "New Feature" or "Improvement" as the Issue Type). Again, it would be helpful if you mentioned that you filed a feature
request on the vcl-dev list.

After you have created a JIRA issue, you have the option to vote on it to help us know how to prioritize issues. You can also "watch" the issue to see when activity related to it is submitted.

Change Log

Sub-task

  • [VCL-67] - Allow OS, provisioning engine, and other module objects to access each other

Bug

  • [VCL-14] - xCAT.pm's capture_monitor output always displays "attempt 1/80"
  • [VCL-26] - get_reservation_remote_ip subroutine redefined warning
  • [VCL-34] - When adding computers, missing requirement for the provisioning module
  • [VCL-51] - user groups that have a name that is a number cause problems on the privilege page
  • [VCL-54] - disable LDAP referrals for all LDAP connections to handle firewalls
  • [VCL-55] - processBulkComputerInput in computers.php not always setting startpripaddress, endpripaddress, startmac
  • [VCL-61] - blockrequest and the reload state
  • [VCL-62] - Calls to _rpower in Windows.pm cause reservation processes to die
  • [VCL-64] - EmptyRecycleBin.exe utility causes problems during image capture
  • [VCL-69] - Unknown column 'af.shibonly' in 'field list'
  • [VCL-71] - Reservation processes being killed unexpectedly
  • [VCL-73] - new.pm::computer_not_being_used hangs occasionally
  • [VCL-74] - Reservation may fail if user's UID value is null
  • [VCL-75] - Bug in Perl 5.8.0 causes exit status to be reported incorrectly
  • [VCL-76] - form tags outside of td tags on Edit Image Profiles page
  • [VCL-79] - error in how the end time for schedule times is computed
  • [VCL-81] - Image retrieval does not verify if it was successful
  • [VCL-85] - watchInFlight error appears if image description contains special characters
  • [VCL-88] - vclreload account assumed to match the default affiliation
  • [VCL-90] - Image reservation for sub-image with "nousercheckout" flag set
  • [VCL-91] - edit reservation allows saving/updaing image for cluster reservations
  • [VCL-96] - < and > in user's passwords not handled properly
  • [VCL-101] - forimaging flag causes wrong user when imaging linux in reserved.pm
  • [VCL-103] - vclreload account has invalid curiculumid
  • [VCL-108] - apostrophe in image name causes AJAX updates to privilege page to break
  • [VCL-109] - viewing requests from timetable not using continuations
  • [VCL-111] - missing default values for vmtype table
  • [VCL-119] - Reservations insert log.ending = EOR when they shouldn't
  • [VCL-126] - get_new_dbh() doesn't return correct value if different database is specified
  • [VCL-129] - LockerWrtUser doesn't work with usernames containing underscores
  • [VCL-131] - utils getdynamicaddress routine - bad regex
  • [VCL-136] - missing perlpackage for id 6 in module table
  • [VCL-143] - need to drop allowing new reservations to take priority over reload reservations
  • [VCL-151] - apostrophe in last name can cause an error when adding user to database
  • [VCL-166] - Windows firewall subs not catching "Object already exists" in netsh.exe output
  • [VCL-167] - run_ssh_command not catching host key differs warning messages
  • [VCL-172] - xCAT21.pm - xcat database is locked at dbdimp.c error
  • [VCL-186] - Windows images losing default gateway
  • [VCL-187] - Ubuntu.pm - not completed
  • [VCL-191] - path changes in vshpere SDK vmware perl toolkit
  • [VCL-207] - Predictive reload modules not accounting for machines in block computers table
  • [VCL-213] - Bug in retrieve_image sub in vmware.pm and xCAT.pm calls next instead of return
  • [VCL-218] - vmware.pm may delete image being captured by cleanup process
  • [VCL-226] - Windows reboot fails - processing another action error
  • [VCL-238] - Linux.pm pre-capture routine not shuting down OS
  • [VCL-240] - utils.pm - insert_reload_request
  • [VCL-246] - READY flag check for VMware and xCAT is being thrown off by other processes running on machines
  • [VCL-247] - computer with shortname only in database not being reloaded after being used
  • [VCL-263] - Linux.pm - add default vcl user group

Improvement

  • [VCL-3] - clean up database
  • [VCL-6] - update healthcheck.pl to use modularized code
  • [VCL-15] - modify blockrequest module to use frontend API for scheduling
  • [VCL-20] - Configuration of sshd port for image retrieval
  • [VCL-23] - Modularize Windows OS code
  • [VCL-63] - Remove critical notification if image is configured with a user group containing 0 members
  • [VCL-65] - Remove pagefile from all drives during image capture
  • [VCL-72] - die and warning signals are not handled by the backend code
  • [VCL-84] - Prevent users from starting create image until computer is in inuse state
  • [VCL-105] - an image cannot have itself as a subimage
  • [VCL-106] - mail notifications notify routine
  • [VCL-107] - User email notifications
  • [VCL-110] - 2 second deley in vcld may cause problems with imaging
  • [VCL-112] - Provide access to image affiliation data via DataStructure.pm
  • [VCL-115] - allow user groups with the same name but different affiliations
  • [VCL-118] - Add delay to run_ssh_command() & run_scp_command() retry attempts
  • [VCL-120] - Add subroutine to set IE's runonce registry keys so user isn't presented with it
  • [VCL-124] - locally affiliated users need a way to change their password
  • [VCL-128] - Update reclaim.pm
  • [VCL-132] - vcld check_time
  • [VCL-156] - insert current_image.txt file on kickstart based nodes
  • [VCL-157] - Add support for xCAT 2.1 partimage format
  • [VCL-173] - add power_off,power_on,power_reset,power_status routines to xCAT21 module
  • [VCL-175] - Set virtual switch 0 from database value for VMware GSX
  • [VCL-176] - Prevent vmware.pm from looping 15 times before checking ssh during load
  • [VCL-177] - Remove Windows OS post-load configuration tasks from vmware.pm
  • [VCL-183] - DataStructure.pm contains duplicate subroutines: get_computer_private_ip and get_computer_private_ip_address
  • [VCL-184] - Update database schema for 2.1 release
  • [VCL-185] - Modularize Linux OS Code
  • [VCL-188] - Document Windows tools dependencies
  • [VCL-190] - Add time configuration and synchronization commands to Windows post_load
  • [VCL-205] - allow esx provisioing module to set MAC addresses
  • [VCL-212] - Add code to set SysprepStatus registry keys for Windows 6
  • [VCL-217] - xcat modules - Throttle control
  • [VCL-228] - Windows image capture fails to delete user profiles because file is open

New Feature

  • [VCL-1] - xCAT 2.0 module
  • [VCL-4] - add support for Shibboleth authentication
  • [VCL-7] - modify healthcheck.pl to monitor vms
  • [VCL-18] - allow dynamic change of predictive loading module
  • [VCL-19] - add configuration of v2 fields for management nodes
  • [VCL-21] - add check for existance of image libraries
  • [VCL-29] - author an ESX and ESX 3i provisioning module (using netboot)
  • [VCL-33] - add user group management to XML RPC API
  • [VCL-78] - API for backend to allocate computers for block reservations via the frontend
  • [VCL-123] - add Ubuntu Support using the new OS Module framework
  • [VCL-209] - create a page that will test for required php modules and correct configuration

Task

  • [VCL-70] - Create a basic helloworld.pm provisioning module
  • [VCL-95] - Set Subversion properties for files in repository
  • [VCL-135] - remove all references to ncsu
  • [VCL-198] - Release tasks
  • [VCL-264] - VCL 2.1 RC2 todo items
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